Should NCAA wrestling adopt all or some freestyle rules?

[forkemaz]

How good is BTS viewership? How about national qualifier tournaments? No one watches freestyle.

[Wrestleknownothing]

4 minutes ago, alex1fly said:

I worry a bit about the throws and kids health. 
 

Disagree that freestyle is a better product. Different.
 

Would be an interesting switch though for sure. Curious what athletes think about it, they’re the ones actually doing it. 

I am curious about Askren's take. He had massive success at folk and some, but less, success at free. Also he tends to be thoughtful and inaightful on these subjects.

[forkemaz]

1 minute ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

I am not convinced that has anything to do wirh the style, but with the tribalism. PSU fans tune in to see PSU. Hawkeye fans tune in to see Hawkeyes. And so on. Swap free for folk and you still have tribes. If you still have tribes, you still have fans.

Any way to try and prove that? These same school have RTCs. Whats the veiwership look like for an RTC duel vs a NCAA duel? I doubt its comparable.

[Wrestleknownothing]

2 minutes ago, forkemaz said:

How good is BTS viewership? How about national qualifier tournaments? No one watches freestyle.

And yet we all watch the Olympics in sports we do not care about. Because tribe.

[forkemaz]

Just now, Wrestleknownothing said:

And yet we all watch the Olympics in sports we do not care about. Because tribe.

Once every 4 years and people pick and choose events. Wheres freestylr wrestling rank among that novelty? Is one of top most watched? Are more or comparable amount of Americans watching olympic wrestling compared to the NCAA finals? I doubt it.

[Caveira]

2 minutes ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

And yet we all watch the Olympics in sports we do not care about. Because tribe.

It’s not really we all is it?   It’s a smaller (unknown) % of the overall fan base.   A metric of posts on here is interesting.  How many during the 2/3 day ncaa finals vs a week or so Olympic schedule.  Any reasonable tangible metric shows folks is massively more popular.  

[Wrestleknownothing]

4 minutes ago, forkemaz said:

Any way to try and prove that? These same school have RTCs. Whats the veiwership look like for an RTC duel vs a NCAA duel? I doubt its comparable.

Prove? No. But I do think Olympic swimming is a good natural experiment. No one, besides me, cares about swimming between the Olympics (huge mistake everyone), but when it is about country medal counts, and in a sport where the US racks up medals year after year, it is center stage to the point that a wrestling message board obssesses over how unfair it is that Michael Phelps is considered the GOAT.

[Chigachanuk]

As a longtime fan of collegiate wrestling, I prefer our folkstyle to the international freestyle:  more more action and differeent approaches to offense, but the reality is that much of the offensive action/styles, do not translate to freestyle.  I think our low level of success in the international sport will continue.  It's not the wrestlers:  when the like of Dake, Retheford, and Brooks eek out a Bronze we must question the styles they've developed since the age of 6 that don't translate to Olympic success.  They train and build skills for 20 years only to find them relatively useless in the international arena.  Don't doubt how the international coaches have learned "how to beat Americans" quite successfuly.  Change or die.

 

 

[forkemaz]

3 minutes ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

Prove? No. But I do think Olympic swimming is a good natural experiment. No one, besides me, cares about swimming between the Olympics (huge mistake everyone), but when it is about country medal counts, and in a sport where the US racks up medals year after year, it is center stage to the point that a wrestling message board obssesses over how unfair it is that Michael Phelps is considered the GOAT.

Swimming is highly intuitive. Any one from 5-105 can watch and jump in at any point and understand whats going. Its a race. Races are simple and it has really close finishes which are exciting. This is truly apples and oranges.

[Wrestleknownothing]

5 minutes ago, Caveira said:

It’s not really we all is it?   It’s a smaller (unknown) % of the overall fan base.   A metric of posts on here is interesting.  How many during the 2/3 day ncaa finals vs a week or so Olympic schedule.  Any reasonable tangible metric shows folks is massively more popular.  

I was thinking about that too, but it isn't quite the right way to isolate the effect of tribe because it compares across two different definitions of tribe, college vs country, instead of comparing otherwise like events, one with tribe and one without. A better, but imperfect way due to the school aligned RTC programs, is to look at freestyle without tribe (BTS, Fargo (aka pre-tribe?), US Open, OTT, and the like) versus freestyle with tribe (Olympics). And there the contrast is stark.

[Wrestleknownothing]

3 minutes ago, forkemaz said:

Swimming is highly intuitive. Any one from 5-105 can watch and jump in at any point and understand whats going. Its a race. Races are simple and it has really close finishes which are exciting. This is truly apples and oranges.

The comparison is not swimming vs wrestling. The comparison is non-Olympic swimming versus Olympic swimming where the inly difference is tribe.

[peanut]

27 minutes ago, forkemaz said:

Freestyle is a better product by what metric?

We alread have this and have had it, Yonger, Abdurakmonov, Ganabayar, the other ISU kid and much more. 

Last two points are interesting.

Right, some international kids have crossed over from free to folk. But if college was free I think you’d see a lot more. It would be great wrestling, and recruiting would be way more interesting. 

[forkemaz]

20 minutes ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

The comparison is not swimming vs wrestling. The comparison is non-Olympic swimming versus Olympic swimming where the inly difference is tribe.

Thats one part of a larger analysis that would need to happen. Swim gets a big boost in viewers during olympics, why? the boost is so large that it is one of in not the most watched sport during the olympics, why? Does wrestling receive a similar viewership boost, why or why not? Is there something about the sports themselves that makes the boost so different? Is there anything we could do to get more viewership for freestyle in the olympics such as copying something swim does? 

 

So we need to compare both and I think we will come to the conclusion one sport is simply easier to understand and thus gets more viewers. Im willing to be wrong i just dont beleive i am.

 

[Scouts Honor]

2 hours ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

Good question. How do the women handle this in college? Do they go three with video review or just one, or something in between?

i don't know.

[Scouts Honor]

1 hour ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

And yet we all watch the Olympics in sports we do not care about. Because tribe.

i watched a little... mostly just for background noise.

i didn't even watch wrestling this year unless usa was in the match

[Scouts Honor]

im wondering where the better product comes from?

you do have 'higher' level wrestlers...

but more exciting? 

the thing that makes ncaa less exciting is that PSU wins every year.

that will still probably be the case...

and that many of the high level duals are blowouts...

but at an evenly matched dual... it's exciting

 

 

the shot clock does NOT improve action. guys just wrestle thru it. no extra attempt.. nothing

SOME have begun attacking the guy on the clock to gain an extra point... but not many... 

most just take it as a time to relax and stall

[Spladle08]

Obviously learning to scramble without exposing your back is way up there in developing a Freestyle based takedown game. 

But for me personally, I'd like to see step-out and no overtime, implemented. 
I think it would make a better overall product.

[forkemaz]

10 minutes ago, Spladle08 said:

Obviously learning to scramble without exposing your back is way up there in developing a Freestyle based takedown game. 

But for me personally, I'd like to see step-out and no overtime, implemented. 
I think it would make a better overall product.

Step outs would be even more gamified in folk where we have mat wrestling and escapes. Having matches end with no take downs and just push outs will not go well with the fans in my opinion 

No overtime is terrible. Games that last 2 hours have an OT; a wrestling match is 6 or 7 minutes depending on style and someone winning in a tie situation doesnt play well with the larger sports population 

Edited August 11 by forkemaz

[Spladle08]

1 minute ago, forkemaz said:

Step outs would be even more gamified in folk where we have mat wrestling and escapes. 

No overtime is terrible. Games that last 2 hours have an OT; a wrestling match is 6 or 7 minutes depending on style and someone winning in a tie situation doesnt play well with the larger sports population 

Meh, its how I feel, but it looks like you feel differently 

[Scouts Honor]

12 minutes ago, Spladle08 said:

Obviously learning to scramble without exposing your back is way up there in developing a Freestyle based takedown game. 

But for me personally, I'd like to see step-out and no overtime, implemented. 
I think it would make a better overall product.

i do like the idea of no OT

give them one one minute period if tied ... then done

[Scouts Honor]

the step out is not wrestling

if we really feel this much about staying in bounds... put it in the octagon.

cage matches!!

 

however, as i have said many times

edge wrestling is EXCITING

[Interviewed_at_Weehawken]

I don’t know why an OT is needed. After about the halfway point of every international match, someone is always winning. They are never tied. 

[Spladle08]

1 minute ago, Scouts Honor said:

i do like the idea of no OT

give them one one minute period if tied ... then done

Shoot, I like the idea of increased urgency because even though its 6-6 one guy knows he's down. 
I swear at the college level, the last minute of a tied match is 2 guys staring at each other 89% of the time. 

[Spladle08]

1 minute ago, Scouts Honor said:

the step out is not wrestling

if we really feel this much about staying in bounds... put it in the octagon.

cage matches!!

 

however, as i have said many times

edge wrestling is EXCITING

I just don't like people abusing it, get back to the middle 

[Scouts Honor]

9 minutes ago, Spladle08 said:

Shoot, I like the idea of increased urgency because even though its 6-6 one guy knows he's down. 
I swear at the college level, the last minute of a tied match is 2 guys staring at each other 89% of the time. 

i agree... this is why i like the idea of no OT